Arooj Aftab considers her Grammy nominations a triumph. But they won't define her
This is part a series of features from All Things Considered on first-time Grammy nominees, ahead of the April 3 awards. You can read and listen to the profile on Saweetie; and Jimmie Allen and Barlow & Bear are next.
Remnants of a party linger inside Arooj Aftab's Brooklyn brownstone on a gloomy winter day: Slightly deflated balloons in metallic purple, red and gold hover against the ceiling of her living room, and a well-used ashtray sits on her patio table.
Against one wall, a banner reads "TWO TIME GRAMMY NOMINEE LIVES HERE" in big, bold letters. It is mid-December, just a few days after she heard the news.
"I did not get this myself and, like, put it up," Aftab says, chuckling as she points to the banner. Her friends had bought it for the party they threw to celebrate Aftab's nominations for Best New Artist and Best Global Performance for her song "Mohabbat."
Aftab has lived in this apartment for more than six years. She shares it with her partner, roommate, and Tuna, a feral cat she took in as her own. She has spent a lot of time here, ruminating, writing, rehearsing and occasionally recording music— some of which is on her 2021 album Vulture Prince.
"I'm very complacent just being inside," she says. "I'm not, like, one of those people who is like, 'I didn't go out today, oh my God, I feel crazy.'"
But she is intentional about the objects she surrounds herself with — like a patterned, hand-woven rug from her hometown of Lahore, Pakistan — objects that she says evoke "mysticism and chill."
Aftab's heritage and penchant for mysticism also come through in her music, which is rooted in the ancient Sufi tradition made famous by poets like Rumi. Sufi music is traditionally thought of as devotional and repetitive, allowing humans to connect with a higher power. Aftab's definition is looser.
"To me, what characterizes Sufi music is minimalism and cyclical motifs in the songs, in the writing of the song structure," she says. "Anything that evokes a sense of peace, even if it's very fast paced."
For Aftab, it isn't just the sound of the music that qualifies it as Sufi, it's what it does to you and where it takes you. She has spent more than a decade digesting some of the ancient poetry that is featured in her music.
"It takes that long, really, to sit with poetry that is that old and understand it and absorb it like proper osmosis, and really feel it in your own body," she says.
Her work infuses that ancient poetry with new music, especially on Vulture Prince, which is Aftab's third album. It spans seven songs that range from melancholy to playful, but they are always bold in a way that reflects the deep history that inspired them.
One critic described her lyrics as "humid," to which Aftab responded with her signature belly laugh and joked that the descriptor made her feel like a wet sock.
"The nice thing is that it occupies many different spaces for different people, and also for me, right? It's like an amalgamation of all of my inherited heritages," she says.
Heritages that include Pakistani and Sufi traditions, but also jazz, folk, and minimalist music. She draws inspiration from the likes of Abida Parveen — "the queen of Sufi music" — famed jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, and minimalist composer Terry Riley. Yet while her influences span genres and generations, Aftab says she didn't listen to any music while making her latest album. "It distracts you from your own voice," she sums up neatly.
Aftab was born to Pakistani parents in Saudi Arabia. When she was 10, her family returned to Lahore where she spent her teens, until she moved to the U.S. to study music production and engineering at Berklee School of Music. She has lived in New York for the past 15 years, immersed in the jazz scene. But wherever she was, music was always a central part of her life.
"Pakistanis, on a cultural level, are never without music, never without poetry, never without some form of art or dance," she says.
She recalls growing up around parents and family friends exchanging and playing music together. "It's part of the tapestry. It's just everywhere."
Of the seven songs on her latest album, six are in Urdu and one in English. Aftab says she has finally reached a place where she has mastered expressing herself through singing in Urdu.
"I've barely just scratched the surface of [singing in English]," she says. "I feel like as a vocalist, the register in which your voice actually lives changes based on the language you're singing it in. There's diction, there's breath ... then there's the emotion and there's the delivery of the words."
Aftab is a self-described perfectionist. But she is keen on bringing fun to an often pensive form of music. Originally written by early 20th century poet Hafeez Hoshiarpuri, many artists, including Mehdi Hassan and Jagjit Singh, have performed renditions of the song "Mohabbat" (which is one of many words for "love" in Urdu). Aftab describes the song as "sad and depressing" but says she interpreted some humor in the lyrics that she was able to infuse into her version. "[It has a] comedic aspect to it that I've always found resonated with me ... and I've never really seen it in any version that anyone else has sung," she says.
Aftab brings that kind of levity and contradiction to the entire conversation about her music and the Grammy nominations, and she seems wary of defining her work too precisely. She is elated that her music is being recognized for the highest award in the music industry, while also being cynical of a world that often recognizes musicians by their accolades. And while Aftab is proud to be the first Pakistani woman to be nominated in the Grammy's Best New Artist category, she shrugs at the qualifier, pointing out that she has now spent more time in the U.S. than in Pakistan.
"To be nominated as a best new artist, for me, feels like all this work I've done, not to be otherized and not always be thought of as 'new age' or 'world music' or 'international folk,'" she says.
For Aftab, the lack of qualifiers in the Best New Artist category is a monumental triumph in itself.
The audio for this story was produced by Jonaki Mehta and edited by Christopher Intagliata. The article was written by Jonaki Mehta.
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Transcript
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Today, we continue our series on first-time Grammy nominees with the composer and singer Arooj Aftab. The day we met her, she had just gotten back from a trip to Pakistan.
AROOJ AFTAB: This is kind of the (unintelligible) that was next door.
CHANG: The living room of her Brooklyn brownstone was littered with confetti and these slightly deflated balloons.
AFTAB: I got back from Karachi, and then the next day, everybody was like, well, we're coming over, and we're going to celebrate. So, you know, there were balloons. My friend brought this banner that says, two-time Grammy nominee lives here. I did not get this myself.
CHANG: Aftab had just learned about her Grammy nominations for Best New Artist and Best Global Music Performance. Her music - it's melancholy at times...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LULLABY")
AFTAB: (Vocalizing).
CHANG: ...Playful at others.
(SOUNDBITE OF AROOJ AFTAB SONG, "LULLABY")
CHANG: And it's always bold.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LULLABY")
AFTAB: (Singing in non-English language).
CHANG: That last quality seems like a key part of her personality, too. Like, she told us about a time when she was performing at a Sufi music festival. One of the stars on the bill was Abida Parveen, among the greatest Sufi singers alive.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MAN KUNTO MAULA")
ABIDA PARVEEN: (Singing in non-English language).
CHANG: Aftab tracked her down.
AFTAB: I kind of took the elevator up to her suite and then was just kind of outside her door.
CHANG: She was nervous. She hesitated before knocking. But when she did, Parveen welcomed her in.
AFTAB: And she's just, like, wearing this sort of, like, maroon, long silk thing and is just sort of, like, floating down the hallway. You know, she brought her harmonium, and then we sang "Man Kunto Maula" together...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MAN KUNTO MAULA")
PARVEEN: (Singing in non-English language).
AFTAB: ...Which, like, I really shouldn't have done because I was so young and probably really bad.
CHANG: It was a classic Sufi song, which Aftab eventually released on her first album some years later.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MAN KUNTO MAULA")
AFTAB: (Singing in non-English language).
CHANG: Today, almost 12 years since that day in Abida Parveen's hotel room, Aftab's music continues to draw from ancient tradition, like the poetry of the 13th-century Sufi mystic poet Rumi.
AFTAB: In college, I started reading Rumi, and that felt really great. And I kind of liked Rumi's playfulness, you know, how he's like, you know, I'm drunk. You're insane. How are we going to get home? You know - or like, last night, my beloved was like the moon - so beautiful, even brighter than the sun, grace far beyond my grasp. The rest is silence.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LAST NIGHT")
AFTAB: (Singing) So beautiful like the moon, even brighter than the sun.
And so that was just all sitting there on a page for, like, a bunch of years. And then at some point, there was, like, a jam with a friend of mine, and he was just playing some, like, reggae. And I just started singing that, you know? And it flew off the pages and into a melody and into my voice. And it was just, like, whoo (ph).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LAST NIGHT")
AFTAB: (Singing) Was even brighter than the sun, was even brighter than the sun.
CHANG: How do you make these songs your own or how do you make them feel accessible to listeners today when these lyrics, in some cases, are centuries old?
AFTAB: A lot of these poems are poems that I've been sitting with for, like, 10 years, you know? And it takes that long, really, to kind of sit with poetry that is that old and understand it and kind of absorb it - like, proper osmosis - and, like, really feel it in your own body as if it's yours. And it's like - relates to the things that have happened to you in your life.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DIYA HAI")
AFTAB: (Singing in non-English language).
CHANG: I want to talk about how you found Pakistani music growing up. I mean, were you surrounded by this kind of music your whole life? Or how did you stumble into it?
AFTAB: I mean, I think Pakistanis, just on a cultural level, are, like, never without music, you know what I mean? Like, it's just - you know, it's, like, part of the tapestry. It's part of just - it's just everywhere, actually, you know?
I'm extremely proud for our heritage and from where I come from. Pakistan is incredible, and, like, it's a city of gardens and dance and poetry and literature and architecture and horse riding and, like, emeralds. It's, like, this culturally rich civilization that has been on for, like, centuries.
CHANG: Well, "Mohabbat" is maybe the song that you've been recognized for the most.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MOHABBAT")
AFTAB: (Singing in non-English language).
CHANG: You know, you've gotten all this recognition for that song, despite the fact that this song has been covered by many Pakistani singers in the past. Can you talk about what drew you to making your own rendition of this song?
AFTAB: I have always really loved the poetry of it, which is kind of like, you know, you have so many lovers. You always will. But, you know, I'm just not going to be one of them. It's so - it has this, like, really sad and depressing but also, like, really comedic aspect to it. That's always something that's resonated with me, and I've never really seen it in any version that anyone else has sang. And there's never really any innovation in the music of it. But for me, I just - I brought this energy of kind of, like, stupidity to the song.
(SOUNDBITE OF AROOJ AFTAB SONG, "MOHABBAT")
AFTAB: But then there's also, like, this really dark synth crazy moment that happens where I've seen people's faces when they're listening to it for the first time, and they're just like, I have been dismantled by this part.
(SOUNDBITE OF AROOJ AFTAB SONG, "MOHABBAT")
AFTAB: It actually just hits you and reminds you that, oh, my God, no, actually, this is a really sad thing.
(SOUNDBITE OF AROOJ AFTAB SONG, "MOHABBAT")
CHANG: As we mentioned, you're being nominated now in the best new artist category, which is sort of funny because you've been at this for quite some time. And I'm just wondering, what does it feel like to be introduced to the world by the Grammys as new? How does that sit with you?
AFTAB: I'm like, hey, look - I'll take it. I mean...
(LAUGHTER)
AFTAB: I mean, this is normal. This is not unusual in the musician world that you're at it for so long. Like, look at Julius Eastman, like, Jeff Buckley, Eva Cassidy. Like, look at these people who became so well-known after they had to go and die, you know?
CHANG: Right.
AFTAB: Like, this is not that. This is like - this is, you know, I'm still alive, and I'm just glad that it's happening, like, while I'm still in my 30s. So that's...
(LAUGHTER)
AFTAB: Like, I think I should just say that it was definitely a very pleasant and romantic surprise, and I'm really grateful for it. And I'm really excited for what's to come next.
(SOUNDBITE OF AROOJ AFTAB SONG, "INAYAAT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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